Pussy Riot 'receiving death threats in penal colony'

One of the two jailed members of the Russian political opposition group, Pussy
Riot, has described how she received death threats from two inmates inside
the penal colony where she is serving her sentence.

Feminist punk group Pussy Riot members, from left, Maria Alekhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova before they were sentencedPhoto: AP

Maria Alekhina, 24, said she believed the women – a drug trafficker and a murderer – were recruited by prison officials in order to persecute her and inform on her.

"They [the two women] work for the operational department," she told a member of President Vladimir Putin's advisory body on developing civil society and human rights. "They started making remarks and threats, including of physical violence The idea was that if you stay in this detachment, that'll be the end of you."

Miss Alekhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 23, were sentenced to two years imprisonment in August after being found guilty of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred". The charge related to a "punk prayer" they performed in Moscow's main cathedral in February last year in which they urged the Virgin Mary to "drive out Putin". A third member of the group was also sentenced but later released on appeal.

The jailing of the two women caused an international outcry and has been held up by Russia's embattled opposition as a symbol of repression by Mr Putin, who returned to the Kremlin in May.

In the lengthy interview published in the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, Miss Alekhina said she found the hardest thing to confront in Perm region's Correctional Colony No. 28 was, "how a slave mentality is formed, and how people submit to it."

"It's not a few cases, it's a mass of them, with practically no exception," she said. "Ignorance, cowardice, betrayal, denunciations – this is the norm."

Miss Alekhina said she had upset prison authorities by complaining about deficiencies such as inadequate clothing and the absence of hot water. The two women who threatened her had been moved to her group of 100 inmates, who shared a living space, shortly after she arrived. She claimed to know they had a contract with prison officials to inform on her in exchange for privileges.

One of the two alleged snitches reportedly told a prisons watchdog that Miss Alekhina was safer in her cell.

"Something could happen to her if she comes out," she said.

The second woman, a convicted murderer, admitted she had threatened the activist. "I didn't like the way she behaved," the inmate explained.

After the conflict with the two inmates Miss Alekhina asked to be removed from the group and was placed in an isolation cell, which she said she preferred because it allowed her to read in peace.

In a separate interview from Correctional Colony No. 14 in Mordovia region, Miss Tolokonnikova described how she worked sewing uniforms for prison guards.

She said she was allowed to speak daily by telephone for 15 minutes, including to her husband Petr, an artist, and their daughter Gera, four, who had read her a rhyme that day.